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The Skidmore Challenge
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Jun 6, 2007 Posted by Rich Harwood
This past week I spent an amazing three days at my 25th college reunion. (I know I’m getting old.) At the same time I have been reading David Halberstam’s bestseller, The Best and the Brightest. What do these two things have to do with each other? Everything!
While at Skidmore College I gave a talk about the conditions of public life and politics. During the Q&A, my fellow graduates focused a great deal on how so many of us are now overwhelmed by the avalanche of unfiltered news, a lack of trust in political leaders and the belief that few good ones are on the horizon, and a nagging worry about how change can be created when so many of us are focused inwardly on our own needs.
Meanwhile, The Best and the Brightest is a story of a group of people who believed that they knew answers to the tough questions of their day. But the tale reminds us that no one individual, or group of self-selected individuals, has a lock on the vision or the knowledge necessary for moving society forward. Indeed, the book brilliantly reveals the sheer hubris that can take hold of people when they lose sight of what is required to create change, especially change that accounts for and reflects people’s reality and their aspirations.
Which leads me back to my talk in Palamountain Hall at Skidmore College.
You see, we are trying to navigate our lives in a time when so many aspects of our society are up for grabs and being reshaped. The newspaper industry that so many of us grew up with is in a free fall and may not exist in the years ahead. The ways in which we communicate on cell phones and via the Internet have altered how gather information and relate to one another. The spread of a consumer mindset into virtually every facet of our lives – especially our public lives – has titled the balance of society inward, away from notions of the public good.
The discussion that people wanted to have at Skidmore was that we are living in the midst of a major societal transformation. That’s not news, obviously. But because we are only a portion of the way through the transformation, we often experience tremendous dissonance in our lives, can feel incredibly unsettled, and are concerned about what’s next on the horizon. That is important.
But, still, what does this have to do with The Best and the Brightest?
Well, my point is this: we cannot expect a new, select group of leaders, however much we trust them, to get us through this transformation. No one individual or group knows exactly what it will take to move ahead; even more to the point, what is required, in large part, is that we generate new pockets of innovation and change that will create new pathways forward. Indeed, what people yearn for today is a sense of possibility that we can discover such pathways – whether on challenges such as health care and public schools to re-connecting people and growing new public leaders and civic-minded organizations.
I told my fellow Skidmore grads that their communities, and this country, are waiting for them to step forward and help lead the way to create these new pathways. Indeed, the work of change must often start at the local level, where people can come together, build new relationships and solutions, and innovate (and, yes, fail from time-to-time, and learn). It is these pockets of change that will help us to cultivate the necessary conditions to support larger, more systemic efforts.
The notion that some small collection of best and the brightest people will lead the way forward fails to take into account history and how so much innovation and change has occurred in our nation. Look back over time and it is clear that so many efforts were initially led by small groups of like-minded people who were willing to initiate change.
Like other Americans, my Skidmore friends are hungry for a new way forward.